Meeting your other half’s parents, job interviews, losing your virginity: three events that, while intimidating, pale in comparison to a gym induction. Just imagine: you’re surrounded by meatheads that can bench press everything but their car, and you don’t even know what a rep is. Worse yet, said meatheads are livid because you’ve left the weights out. While we can’t do much in way of conflict resolution, we can provide the social etiquette to avoid such scrapes with our comprehensive list of commandments. No Mirror Selfies Contrary to what #Fitspo Instagram feeds will have you believe, it’s not acceptable to take photos of yourself in the mirror. We don’t care if you think it’ll make a fire Tinder picture. It won’t.

Don’t Flex Or Lift Up Your Shirt In The Mirrors Either Who are you trying to impress, exactly? The 45-year-old dad on the rowing machine or the girl on the treadmill who’s frowning your way? Don’t Give Unsolicited Tips Or Advice Make like a Victorian child and be seen rather than heard. If someone wants your advice because your squat game is strong, they’ll be sure to ask for it.

Don’t Loiter Around Equipment That’s In Use You know how annoying is it when you’re trying to reverse out of a parking space and a car behind is blocking your way trying to jump in? Yeah, well times that by a million. Wipe Down Machines Giving blood, sweat and tears is a metaphor, not a demand. Always wipe down benches and machines after use.

Never Unload A Barbell Unless You’re Sure Nobody Is Using It The one thing more infuriating than someone disrupting your session is someone stealing your equipment. Never Speak To Anyone Mid-Set As above.

Be Clean And Pack Fresh Gear You might be able to tolerate the funk of three-day old gym kit but your fellow gym-goers don’t want to. Put Your Weights Back Other people pay just as much to use the equipment – the least you can do is leave it in the right place.